


Turned

by KSLoops



Category: Original Work
Genre: #tacticalvamp, Character Turned Into Vampire, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, Gen, Military, Opennovellacontest, Opennovellacontest2019, Strong Female Characters, Vampires, Women in the Military, military vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 20:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17535575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KSLoops/pseuds/KSLoops
Summary: The war against vampires and the disease that creates them is unlike any other humanity has ever faced. With one bite, people are transformed into enemy combatants. No matter how loyal, how well-trained, or how disciplined someone is, the result is always the same. Each person is plundered for information, then pleasure, and then fed back into the conflict to destroy everything they value.Sergeant Wren Horan leads a squad whose sole purpose is to find and kill such vampires. On one fateful mission, she encounters more than a group of fledglings. She walks into a massacre and faces what she fears most: turning.  But when she wakes up, it’s not as a mindless fledgling. It’s as something else entirely.





	1. Chapter 1

The smell of ruptured guts is nearly unbearable. Wren Horan steps quietly down the hallway, elbows tucked close to her body, M4 held at a downward angle. The sloping chin rest is cool against her skin. She approaches the front desk. A man and woman in scrubs lay on the floor behind it. Their limbs are contorted, broken, and leave snow angels in their own blood. Bites pucker their bodies. Their necks sport gaping wounds; the signature of new vampires. They go for the neck like in the movies, but the carotid arteries hold tremendous pressure in order to pump blood up to the brain. When pierced, the resulting arterial spray means death is almost instantaneous. It's why so many fledgeling attacks are fatal.

A wet sound echoes from down the hallway like someone is ripping cloth. Wren takes position near the corner and uses a mirror to see around it. A man in a hospital gown hunches over the unmoving body of a doctor. It looks like he's wearing an apron. Saliva dribbles down his chin as he bites mindlessly at the corpse. His movements are jerky and uncoordinated. It's an advanced case. He must've waited weeks before coming to the hospital. Contracting the cruoris virus is almost always fatal. Like its cousin rabies, it can only be treated in its early stages and its incubation period is wildly unpredictable.

She leans back and puts the mirror away. Her team watches her, faces hidden behind face shields. They're with her all the way. She signals her intent, then raises her M4 around the corner. The fledgling doesn't look up until the light from her rifle blinds him. His pupils are blown. His mouth hangs open. One of his upper eye teeth has already fallen out. Given time, a new one will erupt in its place.

Her finger curls around the M4's trigger. All it takes is the lightest touch. Not even a squeeze. The round punches through his forehead and he jerks back as if someone yanked his hair. He flops backwards, skinny knees bent at an uncomfortable angle over the doctor's hips. She leads her team forward and takes one last look at the corpse before Harkes gives him the double tap. She can still see tan lines on his arms.

They push forward. The call said two perpetrators, but she suspects more. Even fledglings can't kill three people and injure eighteen inside ten minutes. People lie about it all the time. They hope the person they love will be an exception, but the outcome is always the same: more infections. Most die, some turn. More casualties to mop up.

Something crashes through the ceiling. Wren barely has time to register it as humanoid in shape before she's kicked in the chest. She feels the snap in her ribs rather than any pain. The wall smashes into her back and she's pretty sure she wets herself.

"G.O.!" Harkes shouts.

Gunfire echoes down the hallway. Yelling. Blackness seeps into her peripheral vision as she slumps over.

Then there's only murk. Flashes. Growls. Vignettes of open mouths, hands, bent arms, maroon crusts on paling skin. Whistling air. Something thrown. No, something _charging_.

And...and....

Wren's wobbling. Someone is bent over beside her. She opens her mouth to ask what happened, but something clicks in her brain. The person beside her isn't one of her team. Small, female, greasy brown hair. Barely a teenager. The girl's hands scrabble at the armour on her wrist. Her skin is mottled by pink patches.

The girl sits back and wails like an injured animal. It attracts others. A ring of crazed, pale faces gathers overhead. Hands claw at Wren's helmet, her legs, her boots. Blood and dirt smear across her visor and at least two roll on top of her to lick it off. She tries to reach for her gun, but her arms won't move. Neither will her legs. Her entire body is an inert piece of meat. She blinks sweat out of her eyes as one lifts her right leg and drags her across the floor, dislodging the other two who tumble over like newborn kittens.

The torn remnants of her team litter the floor. She's dragged past a headless body in uniform. It's impossible to tell who. She clenches her teeth and glares up at the nearest person, a balding Latino man in his fifties. His eyes are the shade of brown that looks black in the right light, but pinpoints of blue and red are already visible. His expression is pure animal panic as he grabs her arm and starts to pull it out of its socket. The others copy him. Four fledglings for four limbs. She hears the pop in her leg rather than feels it. The seam in her body armour is stretched. The other three drop her limbs and rush out of her sight.

Suddenly she hears that sound again. Ripping cloth. She can't take it anymore. She screams until her breath runs out. One of the fledglings repositions himself on top of her and smacks her chin with his heel. Her head jerks to the side and the last thing she remembers is grey and yellow compression socks that reek of feet.


	2. Chapter 2

Light spears Wren's eyes. Then darts wildly in the air. A scream. No...more than one. Loud popping. A strong acrid smell. Familiar, but so potent it stings her nose. Sudden gusts of air. Some slow, some very very fast. Impacts. The thump of flesh on flesh. She blinks rapidly. Branching afterimages strobe in her vision. Laughter echoes around her. It's joyous. Exultant. She sniffs loudly and her nose clears. She smells meat and blood. Not metallic, not raw or repugnant, but as complex and flavoursome as the most expertly cooked steak.

A body lands in front of her with a splat. Her mouth waters like it's filet mignon.

Then the body looks up her.

Wide green eyes, the whites nearly incandescent in the dimness. Tactical balaclava. Helmet. Black body armour. A shoulder patch with a familiar symbol. It registers. She can feel its familiarity, but it's like her brain is stuck between gears. The pattern can't quite click.

"Horan," the body says.

Something prompts Wren to look down at herself. Black body armour. The same shoulder patch. She reaches up and feels a helmet. A mask. All of it covered in dents and dried blood. When she shifts her weight, a knife presses against her hip.

_Hands claw at her helmet, her legs, her boots. Blood and dirt smear across her visor and at least two roll on top of her to lick it off._

Wren stands up. She feels light. Almost weightless. A tall figure saunters out of the gloom. A man, extraordinarily pale, walks towards her. He wears an odd mix of clothing like he can't quite decide what century to emulate. A bowler hat is tipped forward toward his left eye. He smiles at her and his moustache arches like the legs of a spider.

"Hello, darling." The Bowler speaks softly in an unremarkable English accent. "Take a seat for me."

His will breaks over her like a wave, but she's a mountain. A deep indifference centres her. It tells her everything she needs to know. He turns, certain that she'll obey, then does a double take.

"Come on now, take a seat. Don't be shy." His eyes gleam a faint red. "It'll be worth the wait, I promise."

The body rolls to one side. "Horan," it says again. The name patch reads HARKES.

The Bowler kicks Harkes aside without effort. He comes within arm's reach and radiates will like it's heat.

"What if I use the magic word? Sit down, please."

Wren looks to Harkes. That exquisite steak smell is stronger than ever, but his name patch bothers her. They share a uniform. That means something. And that something is enough to brush the cobwebs off her brain. Faint popping echoes around the room. At least, it looks like a room, but it's too cavernous and poorly lit to tell.

The popping sound is gunfire. It's loud. Distorted and magnified, but definitely gunfire. Controlled bursts that are steadily fading away. She knows this. She knows them.

The Bowler lifts his chin. "Nothing? You must be something new."

"US Army." Wren squares up to him. "Hooah, motherfucker."

She drives her elbow into his temple. His skull whips to the side with a flare of hair and hot mist. The bowler hat goes flying with part of his scalp. The latter splats onto the floor like a soaked dishcloth.

The Bowler steadies himself and looks up at her with the same wide-eyed expression as Harkes. Fear wafts off of him. As tangible to her as his willpower. But it doesn't feel hot. It feels electric. It buzzes her scalp, the place behind her eyes, the length of her spine. She takes a step forward. They're roughly nine feet apart. He steps back. She takes another step forward. Her fingers graze the hilt of her Gerber. He retreats another two back, hand over the hole in his skin, eyes fixed on her face. The pink stretch of exposed skull already has a plastic sheen to it. He's healing.

"You're only days old," the Bowler says. "You should be as sweet as a lamb."

She takes another step. Less than five feet. "Should I?"

He doesn't maintain the distance this time. His eyes shine with that red-fringed intensity. "It took me 80 years to...." His fear is suddenly diluted by anger. Then rage. "How are you doing this?"

Wren sucks her elbows in and takes a shot at his head. The Bowler's ready for it. He ducks and tries to get under her guard. He has more reach, but she bobs and weaves with him. Those fists whip by her face like concrete blocks. His emotion builds a charge in the air. It's like being in the ring with a grizzly. He tries to pen her in with a few jabs, then feints to the left. She follows him without thinking. His hook clips her jaw. Light bursts in her eyes. Her skin burns. She takes a step back. Another hit like that and it's over. The Bowler bares his teeth and goes in for a cross. His whole body generates the needed torque. She leans back as his fist drives through the air and unsheathes her Gerber.

The fixed blade moulds to the inside of her palm. Everything else is muscle memory. Wren pins the Bowler's arm against her ribs and drives her knife into his liver, armpit, and the soft nook beside his larynx. Dark blood spurts onto her uniform. Hot with a cloying bitterness. Repulsive. The Bowler inhales reflexively and tries to grab her hand. She knees him in the stomach. He doubles over and exposes the pale arch of his neck. Wren locks his head into place with one arm and drives the Gerber into the base of his skull. Bone scrapes along the blade. He gurgles something and struggles weakly. She drives the knife in again. Scraping resistance, then a sudden give. He sags against her. She lets him go and he collapses without a sound.

Wren looks down at him for a moment, then turns toward the salivating steak smell. Harkes is propped up on one side, arm cradled against his ribs. His breaths emerge in strained huffs.

"Sergeant, if you're still in there, please...." He screws his eyes shut and rides out a fresh wave of pain. "Please shoot me. Make it clean."

_She tries to reach for her gun, but her arms won't move. Neither will her legs._

Wren crouches down to stare him right in the face. His head lolls until his helmet clacks against the ground. He stares back at her. The mask makes his eyes appear that much larger and greener. He's so small and warm and helpless. It takes the edge off her hunger. Just like that. And once that registers, she has the time and wherewithal to think about what it means.

"Can _you_ still shoot?" She asks. 

Harkes blinks sweat out of his eyes. It takes him a long time to answer, "Yeah."

"Good. Now let's get the fuck out of here."

 


	3. Chapter 3

Harkes doesn't say anything. He just stares at her. It takes Wren a moment to realize he's speechless.

"Harkes." She snaps her fingers. Nothing. He's freezing up like it's his wedding day. " _Harkes_."

Her voice has a new timbre to it. A lung-rattling growl that should come from a tiger, not a person. They both jump. It echoes around the room. Alien. She nearly doesn't recognize it as part of her voice. But it does the trick. Harkes stops making fish eyes at her.

"Yes." He swallows audibly. "Yes, ma'am."

"You bit?"

He shakes his head.

"Good. Give me a sitrep."

"We're fucked."

She glances at the Bowler. "Details, corporal."

"Came back for KAR." He sucks in a raspy breath. "Then that fuck herded all these fledgelings into us."

The Kill and Retrieve order puts something to rest inside Wren. Vampires take great delight in torturing anyone who hunts them. KARs are just as much for morale as they are for the integrity of operations. You turn, you burn. It's the vow they make to each other.

"Sorry." Harkes watches her closely. "We didn't catch you in time."

She looks towards the far side of the room. It sounds cavernous, the air tastes of wet stone. This place isn't man-made. The implications are endless, but a treacherous squeeze in her throat still commandeers most of her attention. Harkes smells like a $100 steak, but a wave of tenderness still washes over her.

"Save it for my funeral," she says gruffly. "Now let me look at you."

He coughs. "Yes, ma'am."

Wren's eyes adjust to the gloom well enough to give Harkes a good once-over. The way he guards his ribs tells her they're at least bruised. She gently slips her hand under his stab vest. No distention or bulging around his abdomen. One hit from a centennial vampire can break bones, rupture organs, and spread disease. It's happened before. She pulls her hand away and tightens up his vest. He sucks in a sharp breath, but doesn't make any other sound. His right leg is bent at an odd angle. A soaked black patch on his calf has a telltale peak.

"Is it bad?" Harkes asks in a small voice.

She squares her jaw. "Your mic working?"

He groans. "Smashed my radio pack."

It only occurs to Wren to look at her own. It's gone. Of course it's gone.

The Bowler remains still so Wren fishes out her Individual First Aid Kit. The IFAK shows no signs of tearing or contamination. She trades her old gloves for a sterile nitrile pair, carefully pulls his pant leg out of his boot, and rolls it up over the wound. He makes a strangled noise.

Bone juts out of his skin. Bloodied and ivory, pale even in this light. An open fracture. The poor bastard. Wren's mouth suddenly waters. This makes her hungry. Like a whiff of fried food after a long shift. It's the exact same feeling. And it's revolting. But the craving to dig in doesn't go away. It just mixes with the urge to vomit. She can see herself as any other fledgeling: biting down, throwing up, and then eating it all over again like a dog. Tearing into her team after leading them into a fucking slaughterhouse.

It takes a moment to lock that down. Refocus.

Wren inhales shakily and hopes Harkes doesn't hear it. She glances at the Bowler again, keeps an ear out for anomalous sounds, and then concentrates on what's in front of her. Blood seeps up from the around the bone. Not immediately fatal, but blood loss isn't their only enemy, either. She rips open antimicrobial swabs and cleans the wound as best she can. It's only buying time. The chance of an infection is high. Cruoris isn't airborne, but vampires always try to spread it with dirty weapons, and she can smell the blood in the room. If by some miracle the cruoris virus doesn't gain a foothold, there's plenty of other pathogens to take its place. She applies the Israeli pressure dressing, careful not to jostle the bone, and pulls the pressure bar as hard as she dares. Harkes grabs the back of her stab vest instinctively. His breaths escape in feeble little puffs.

"Quit being a bitch," she mutters. "If Mila can give birth to your nine-pound elephant child without an epidural, you can handle a bandaid."

One of those feeble little puffs sounds like a laugh.

Once the dressing is wrapped and hooked, Wren applies the splint roll, and ties it all off with a triangle bandage. There's only one thing left to do: postexposure vaccine. The autoinjectors in her kit are still intact. She stares at the dose of CruVax and wonders if it can still help her. It's a weak thought and she pushes it aside. These needles carry cruoris antigens. It's only half the treatment. Harkes will need human cruoris immune globulin, but her kit doesn't have an IV. If he doesn't get HCIG within a few hours, he's dead. Or worse, he's not. She jams the needle into his thigh and it beeps to confirm the dose is administered.

Wren packs everything up before looking at Harkes. "Still here?"

He nods, but his eyes look a little glassy.

"I'm going to lift you up."

"'S mam."

She slides her hands under his thighs and back, scoops him up, and makes sure his injured side is snug against her. Harkes is taller than her, but he feels as light and fragile as a newborn bird. He cries out in pain, then he bites down hard on it. Shivers wrack his body. His voice echoes around them and the answering silence is deafening.

Nothing stirs. The Bowler lays inert where Wren dropped him. He's at least a century old, old enough to achieve biological immortality, but even mature vampires can't shrug off massive blood loss and a C-spine injury. Still, she gives him a wide berth as she heads towards a faint smell of fresher air.

The room looks to be some sort of cave system. Now that everything's quiet, Wren hears faint drips of water. She can smell water, too. At least, she thinks she can. It's like someone's dialling up the volume of the entire planet. Every smell, every sound, is intensely complex. And it's not stopping. She can feel Harkes' heartbeat throbbing against her forearms. His breath carries a tang of coffee. Shitty overprocessed coffee with a metallic aftertaste. And an underlying flavour somewhere between pork and beef. A relentless umami note that stirs up the worst protein craving she's had in her life. She grimaces and her tongue presses up against the back of her teeth. It sets off an itchy pain in her gums. Her teeth are coming loose.

Wren focuses on her breathing and walks as quickly and quietly as possible. The smell of fresh air slowly strengthens. The cavern narrows until they're in some sort of tunnel. Smooth, water-carved rock steadily turns rougher and narrower. Great gouges line the walls.

"Sergeant," Harkes whispers.

She pauses and he tentatively reaches out and drags his hand across the nearest gouge. It's a near perfect fit.

_"G.O.!"_

_Gunfire echoes down the hallway. Yelling. Blackness...._

They look at each other. The memory ghosts between them. Wren pushes forward, but the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. This tunnel is at least six feet high and four feet wide. It's not the work of an ordinary vampire, not even a centennial like the Bowler. This is something else.

Wren clutches Harkes close until he gasps in pain. She grunts an apology and speeds up her pace. The tunnel continues to slant upward at an increasingly steep angle. The air changes, too. It's fresher, but increasingly layered. She smells something very sharp. Ammonia, maybe. Blood. Cordite. Metal. Plastic. Something strangely chalky, but not like mould. An absolute kaleidoscope of metallic fragrances like lavender and coconut. Artificial scents? It's all so strong, it makes her dizzy. She breathes through her mouth, but ends up tasting half of it, too.

The obnoxious smells only become stronger. Soon a light bounces off the tunnel walls. Harkes shifts in her arms and, despite the spasm of pain that rips through his body, he unholsters his sidearm. She hugs one side of the wall and angles them both so they can see anything before it sees them. Sounds start to bounce off the walls. Scuffling, metal clicks, electric hums and crackles. As they get closer, she hears whispers, feels a collective but sternly suppressed fear. A shared discipline in the face of an enemy that can enslave them with a single scratch.

Their backup.

No. She forces herself to pause and correct that thought.

 _Harkes_ ' backup.

She looks down at him. He stares at her with those big green eyes. They're glassy again, but not from pain. Not from physical pain, anyway. Her throat clutches tightly in response. The grief takes her by surprise. There's so much sensory input, so much noise in her brain, that it's easy to avoid what she's about to do.

They've served together in this mess for eight years. Harkes, Montana, Tomlinson, Acosta, Moore, Ashwood.... Each one lifelong military, handpicked from different branches to act as a stopgap against the world's most dangerous pandemic. Each one skilled, decorated, and an honour to fight beside. But by Christ, she'll never say so. She'd rather blow a cactus than give her arrogant six-foot brats any credit.

Leading them is 2% soldiering and 98% parenting.

Was.

Leading them _was_ 2% soldiering and 98% parenting.

She repeats the thought in past tense so it will sound true, but it doesn't. That awful squeeze in her throat won't disappear. It pisses her off. Leadership is not her role now. Her role is to get Harkes to safety and then die without incurring anymore casualties. That's how this needs to end. That's how she does right by her team.

Because at least one of them is dead. And that's on her. And she's too much of a coward to ask Harkes about it because he's looking up at her like a kid being dropped off for his first day of school.

"Eyes front," she says quietly. "You know what's about to happen."

He turns away. "Yes, ma'am."

A roughly oval opening peeks above the tunnel floor like a sunrise. Wren takes a step forward, then another. Everything feels slower and heavier. Her feet might as well be mired in concrete. But she keeps pushing forward. She sees sandbags, UV lights, even a .30 cal. Constellations of gun barrels point at her. At least 10 helmets peek up from behind the barricades. Behind them, the vaguely familiar hallway of a hospital. The main power is out.

No one's saying anything. No one's ordering her to stop. No one's pulling the trigger.

Wren steps carefully around broken glass and spent casings. None of the rifles track her movement. The helmets don't move. Her nose stings with the onslaught of different smells. It's enough to make her stumble. She steps around one of the barricades and....

They're dead. They're all dead.


End file.
